Just a quick entry here this morning to start you off on your creative day (you have your Starbucks or favorite cofee in hand don't you?)
Lightroom 2.0 beta is up on Adobe Labs. If you're a photographer, then you'll want to check out what the latest is from the Photoshop Lightroom team. If you've never heard of Lightroom, two things: Where have you been? and... Lightroom is "Photoshop for Photographers" and an awesome program whatever your skill level in Photoshop may be. Give it a test drive.
Also, check out this nifty and quick little tutorial on creating clean silouettes from photos inside of Illustrator with Live Trace. It comes to you from Layers Magazine and will take you only a few minutes to digest. You can get it here
And, as a baseball fan, I can't resist posting an article here from Macworld which gives talks about MLB's new MLB.tv service based on Microsoft's Silverlight technology. As an avid fan of baseball, I look at the MLB.tv service every year because I travel a lot and want to catch the games if I can. However, based on this, I think I'll either wait or pick up a Slingbox when I have a few extra $$. It's interesting to note that MLB's Gameday and many other surrounding services and features are all based on Flash.
Hi all - I've been doing a ton of client meetings as well as internal Adobe meetings, so my posting has flagged a bit lately. However, I wanted to give a couple of pointers for you as you continue looking at the blogosphere and Adobe and Genesis Project blogs in particular.
I clicked on the tutorials button on the right side of the Genesis Project blog to review my humble tutorials and articles that point you to significant lessons on the web. I was somewhat surprised to count almost 50 tutorials created by me within a year. That's a simultaneous 'woo hoo' and 'are you kidding me' kind of moment. A way to go thought followed by a 'you're crazy.' So....click on Tutorials to get a feel for all of the content that is there - you might find something interesting.
I've got a few March events in New York city towards the end of March - one at Adorama and another at MPEG. Of course, we'll have the AENY meeting there as well.
The Genesis Project has received some more comments and along with that some ideas for future articles or tutorials. I will be trying to get some of these done before NAB. In the meantime, please keep the comments coming.
Gotta go!
I'll be the last person to say that I know it all when it comes to After Effects. I mean really...does anyone???
Anyway, someone showed me a simple check box in AE's preferences that remove an obstacle that many casual AE users don't realize.
Continue reading "AE: Faster Previews through 1 check box!" »
Over the holiday break I created a simple birthday card for my son's birthday. As I was doing so, I was thinking that it would make a good example of a VERY basic Photoshop tutorial. If you already understand Layers, Selection tools, gradients and layer styles, then this tutorial is not for you...unless you're a Mets fan. If you're not familiar with some of the aforementioned Photoshop features, then pull up a chair and watch this simple 8 minute tutorial. Click on the link below to watch
PS - Since I've already committed myself above - Let's go Mets!
Continue reading "Another text example in AE - Happy Accidents" »
Recently, over the last couple of weeks, I have had a number of questions come at me about Production Premium's compatibility with Vista and whether users should be using it.
For the record, Production Premium CS3 is and has been Vista compatible since we shipped: Production Premium CS3 System Requirements
These questions along with work that I need to do this week led me to spend some time bringing my Vista machine up to snuff and prompted me to start making it act the way I want it to. So, I wanted to pass on a website and quick tips that I've picked up...
Continue reading "Making Vista play nice - make it bend to your will" »
This news is a bit old, but in the spirit of providing it, I'll use the cliche, "Better late than never." ;-)
The latest update from Apple in conjunction with our After Effects CS3 update now gives OpenGl preview capabilities to Mac customers. PC users, you can read on as well in case you've never turned it on (because you've had it for a while), but Mac users rejoice because you've got another way to potentially speed up After Effects.
Continue reading "Premiere Pro Tutorial: keyboard shortcuts" »
This has been done a thousand times and probably better than I have done. Nevertheless, I've included a PDF for you to download in order to get some of the basics for making good portrait pictures great by using a couple of simple techniques. When you've gone through this, do a search for 'photo touchup tutorials' and see what you get.
Download Sample File and PDF
Continue reading "Bridge Home - source of knowledge and fun" »
Track Mattes are one of the most powerful and versatile effects in non-linear editors and Jeff Schell from DMN has just done a great one. Check it out as it is well worth the time and will give you some great new ideas for using this venerable effect.
If that title does grab your attention, I don't know what will! Realize that I see New York newspapers that are trying for oneupmanship on each other with crazy headlines, which means you're likely to get the same from me - sorry...
Anyway, what am I talking about? Well, when you start working at Adobe, you start to look at everything a little bit differently and consequently, you start to look and see things in a different way than the rest of society. Case in point, my eleven year old daughter said that I'm always commenting on the design ideals of the commercial/film/tv show rather than just watching them. It drives the rest of my family crazy!
So, in looking at a box of snacks, I looked at the logo and said, "Cool, I bet I can do that!" So here you go...
Continue reading "Cereal Boxes - it's how a twisted mind thinks" »
Well I gave it a whirl and I have to say, I really like it. More importantly, I can see things that Adobe can or will do with it in the future. What is it? Read on...
Continue reading "Soundbooth CS3 - have you checked out Resource Central yet?" »
Even from the title, some audio/video people could be going, “Huh? What in the world is he talking about?” And no, I’m not talking about surround sound. My response: Why is this strange? Everything else is in 3D, why not audio editing?
Yesterday, I was at this small show in NY called ProMax BDA which stands for Broadcast Design Association (I think). The event is a showcase for all of the broadcasters to tout their design ideals and work. All of the big boys are there and it's quite interesting: especially the difference between what's acceptable here versus internationally. The quality of people at this show was very high and it was fun to talk and meet with many of them.
So, I was there with Aharon Rabinowitz from Creative Cow and AENY.org and we're talking about Shape Layers...
A quick hit here today as I've got to join an e-seminar at 1PM.
Dean Velez is the owner of the Anvel website and has posted 29 free AE projects from A-Z (really) that you can download. Dean is a talented fellow and he loves to teach After Effects, so these are definitely worth a look. TheAnvel
Also, just starting to go thru a couple of Andrew Kramer's training content and will try to give more about it as I get thru it. Andrew is mostly about visual effects, so it's a different take from something like Dean does. So far, Andrew's training DVD is excellent and he's entertaining to boot. Give his site a looksie. Video Copilot
I'll only add that both of these guys make me whimper into submission at their After Effects prowess. Grrrr... ;-)
Ahhhh, I love it when other people beat me to good ideas! Props to Jean Hauptman for spending some time digging into this. One of the new features of After Effects CS3 (or version 8 if you prefer) is Shape Layers. If you're new to After Effects, this will be a feature that is both easy and fun to play with. For motion element design, I think it will be one of the defining features that push design forward in 2007/2008. Anyway, check it out at: DMN - Shape Layers
Here's a link for you: Video E-Seminars
Want to build the simple, elegant look of reflected images in Photoshop...read on...
Continue reading "Design basics: A current style to imitate" »
A lot of people I meet that are using After Effects don't necessarily take advantage of all the software that comes with it (Remember your Cycore)
The same holds true for setting up AE to take advantage of your system. Today's quick tip is about turning on OpenGL inside of After Effects.
Go to Preferences>Preview
After you enable it, it should look something like this under OpenGL info...
Finally, towards the bottom of your comp window you should click on the fast previews button and make sure OpenGL is on or set to interactive
There are times when you DON'T want to have this on, but generally, it's better to have it on than not. We'll hopefully discuss that in another post.
The basis of this tutorial is about taking a path from Photoshop (or Illustrator) and then using it within After Effects to create a simple animation background.
I've seen this a lot recently, so thought you might find it useful. The attached files are there with a little extra animation and a PDF to give you the essential instructions on how to make a path in Photoshop and animate it in After Effects.
The next version of After Effects will expand its shape capabilities dramatically, but even still, the tutorial here is an essential skill for After Effects users.
One last note - if you're pulling these down, let me know if they're useful or not. Also, feel free to ask for specifics.
I'm a reverse engineer when it comes to design. There, I've admitted it. I can't claim to be a fantastic designer, far from it. I'd call myself a functioning (or disfunctional) user. I'm not a super creative guy, though I'd like to be. This is probably why I get paid to show software rather than use it all the time.
When I see what real creative people can do with Adobe products like After Effects and the like, I can take one of two approaches. I can get depressed and think I can never be as good as them. Or, I admire what they've done and break the image or composition down to it's elements and figure out how it was done.
Maybe you're the fantastic designer or the one that will be with practice and application. If you're not a design genius but still need to bring up your design chops, I've found that the second approach is a lot more fun, enabling and useful - go figure. It's helped me to be more useful when I do get asked to do a design (friends, church, school, etc.) and also when customers come up to me and ask, "hey, how do you do XYZ?"
A lot of the simpler commercials and print ads can easily be broken down to a couple of elements - bits that you know you can do (or figure out). This is especially true as a lot of design has had a very simple asthetic following the simple design trend typified by Apple campaigns.
So, when you see that commercial, print ad or graphic, stop and figure out how it was done. You'll be glad you did.
Under the banner of 'be practical!, my hope is to provide some tutorials and tricks that beginners will find useful. Some of these are designed to encourage you to get your hands dirty, others maybe to show you 'how'd you do that?'
So the link above downloads a short PDF and example file of how to create old fashioned TV lines in Photoshop.
